It collects various essays that take up aspects of the cultural and artistic projects our research was based on, and brings them into conversation with different fields ranging from cultural, political and feminist theory, philosophy, curatorial studies, and art education.

What do a feminist server, an art space located in a public park in North London, a ‘pirate’ library of high cultural value yet dubious legal status, and an art school that emphasizes collectivity have in common? They all demonstrate that art can play an important role in imagining and producing a real quite different from what is currently hegemonic; that art has the possibility to not only envision or proclaim ideas in theory, but also to realize them materially.

Aesthetics of the Commons examines a series of artistic and cultural projects – drawn from what can loosely be called the (post)digital—that take up this challenge in different ways. What unites them, however, is that they all have a ‘double character.’ They are art in the sense that they place themselves in relation to (Western) cultural and art systems, developing discursive and aesthetic positions, but, at the same time, they are ‘operational’ in that they create recursive environments and freely available resources whose uses exceed these systems. The first aspect raises questions about the kind of aesthetics that are being embodied, the second creates a relation to the larger concept of the ‘commons.’ In Aesthetics of the Commons, the commons are understood not as a fixed set of principles that need to be adhered to in order to fit a definition, but instead as a ‘thinking tool’ – in other words, the book’s interest lies in what can be made visible by applying the framework of the commons as a heuristic device.

With contributions by Olga Goriunova, Jeremy Gilbert, Judith Siegmund, Daphne Dragona, Magdalena Tyzlik-Carver, Gary Hall, Ines Kleesattel, Sophie Toupin, Rahel Puffert, and Christoph Brunner.

Sollfrank, Cornelia, Felix Stalder, und Shusha Niederberger (eds.) 2021. Aesthetics of the Commons, Zurich: Diaphanes

Softcover, 276 pages
Open Access PDF, 276 pages
https://www.diaphanes.com/titel/aesthetics-of-the-commons-6419

Reviews & Interviews:

Gerald Raunig. Kommunisierung der Kunst, 03.2021 transversal.at/blog/

Agnieszka Wodzińska. Imagining Possible Worlds with “Aesthetics of the Commons”, March 5, networkcultures.org/blog

Jens Kastner. Buchsprechung, springerin. Hefte für Gegenwartskunst, Wien. Heft 2/2021, S. 73.

n.a. Book Review, neural.it 8/21

 “Aesthetics, Commons and the Production of the Subject: An Interview with Cornelia Sollfrank and Felix Stalder”, Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 16(1). p.74-81. doi: https://doi.org/10.16997/wpcc.920

Framed by her long-standing research on collaborative practices, geographer and ethnographer Penny Travlou introduces two projects she has been involved lately: Platohedro, a space, a platform and community based in Medellín, Colombia, and the Feminist Autonomous Research Center in Athens (FAC). Platohedro refers to the indigenous concepts of Buen Vivir and Buen Conocer and works on adapting them to the contemporary living conditions in urban societies, while FAC puts an emphasis on commnity-based autonomous knowledge production. Both are concerned with forms of thinking and working together that allow for creating alternatives to extractivist, colonial, racist and anti-feminist modes of (knowledge)production.

https://www.eca.ed.ac.uk/profile/dr-penny-travlou
https://platohedro.org/
https://curatingcommonwellbeing.platohedro.org/
https://feministresearch.org/

Interview conducted by Cornelia Sollfrank, 31 March 2021.

Two of the editors of the volume Aesthetics of the Commons (Diaphenes 2021) Cornelia Sollfrank and Felix Stalder discuss with WPCC journal the potential and meanings of the digital commons in creating new subjectivities and new imaginaries on and off the internet. Within this they question whether the focus on the aesthetics of the commons is useful for understanding phenomena such as ‘artistic shadow libraries’, pointing towards the need to build institutions for which ‘practices of commoning are central’. Also considered are the modern art system, copyright, and the corrosive individualism of Western modernity in the artistic sphere. Against these factors they note instead that, ‘the commons are structured through different relations, and care expresses that difference’. New economic approaches are needed in the arts supported by political actors which might include the ‘re-envisioning [of] public institutions, such as public broadcasting, as part of a commons’.

Keywords: commons, aesthetics, copyright, platform capitalism, shadow libraries, care, art system, decolonisation

Editorial Board W., (2021) “Aesthetics, Commons and the Production of the Subject: An Interview with Cornelia Sollfrank and Felix Stalder”, Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 16(1). p.74-81. doi: https://doi.org/10.16997/wpcc.920

Full Article as PDF download

We are very happy to announce the launch of our book Aesthetics of the Commons, online via Depot in Vienna.

Tuesday, 9 March 2021, 7 pm (CET)

Link to zoom meeting (will be active at 6.45 pm):
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82459911204?pwd=Y0FscUMwS1c5QmNtSmxTZ2JmMW9Xdz09

Book launch and discussion

What do a feminist server, an art space located in a public park in North London, a ‘pirate’ library of high cultural value yet dubious legal status, and an art school that emphasizes collectivity have in common? They all demonstrate that art can play an important role in imagining and producing a real quite different from what is currently hegemonic; that art in the post-digital has the possibility to not only conceive or proclaim ideas in theory, but also to realize them materially. The underlying social imaginaries ascribe a new role to art in society and they envision an idea of culture beyond the individual and its possessions.

Aesthetics of the Commons examines a series of artistic and cultural projects—drawn from what can loosely be called the (post)digital—that take up this challenge in different ways. What unites them, however, is that they all have a ‘double character.’ They are art in the sense that they place themselves in relation to (Western) cultural and art systems, developing discursive and aesthetic positions, but, at the same time, they are ‘operational’ in that they create recursive environments and freely available resources whose uses exceed these systems. The first aspect raises questions about the kind of aesthetics that are being embodied, the second creates a relation to the larger concept of the ‘commons.’ In Aesthetics of the Commons, the commons are understood not as a fixed set of principles that need to be adhered to in order to fit a definition, but instead as a ‘thinking tool’—in other words, the book’s interest lies in what can be made visible by applying the framework of the commons as a heuristic device.

Contributions to the book by Christoph Brunner, Daphne Dragona, Jeremy Gilbert, Olga Goriunova, Gary Hall, Ines Kleesattel, Rahel Puffert, Judith Siegmund, Sophie Toupin, Magdalena Tyzlik-Carver.

Aesthetics of the Commons. Felix Stalder, Cornelia Sollfrank, and Shusha Niederberger, eds. 2021. Zürich Berlin: Diaphanes
(available as softcover or open access PDF)

Online launch event with:

Olga Goriunova, cultural theorist, Royal Holloway University, London.
Shusha Niederberger, artist, researcher, and educator, Zurich.
Gerald Raunig, philosopher, Malaga/Zurich.
Cornelia Sollfrank, artist and researcher, Berlin.
Felix Stalder, cultural and media theorist, ZHdK, Zurich.

The event will be held in English.

This book is part of the research project “Creating Commons“, financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation (grant: # 100016_169419), hosted and supported by the Institute for Contemporary Art Research, Zurich University of the Arts,

The exhibition OPEN SCORES brought together a series of practices through which artists articulate their specific forms of digital commons. From online archives to digital tools/ infrastructure and educational formats, the projects envision a (post-)digital culture in which notions of collaboration, free access to knowledge, sustainable use of shared resources, and data privacy are central. For the exhibition, each of the projects created a unique score to present their practice.

Participants:
Dušan Barok (monoskop.org), Marcell Mars & Tomislav Medak (memoryoftheworld.org), Sebastian Lütgert & Jan Gerber (0xdb.org), Kenneth Goldsmith (ubu.com), Sean Dockray (AAAAARG), Zeljko
Blace (#QUEERingNETWORKing), Ruth Catlow & Marc Garrett (furtherfield.org), Laurence Rassel (erg.be), Marek Tuszynski (Tactical Tech), Michael Murtaugh, Femke Snelting & Peter Westenberg (Constant), Stefanie Wuschitz (Mz* Baltazar’s Lab), Panayotis Antoniadis
(nethood.org), Alessandro Ludovico (neural.it), Eva Weinmayr (andpublishing.org), spideralex, Sakrowski (curatingyoutube.net), Creating Commons.
Curated by Creating Commons
(Shusha Niederberger, Cornelia Sollfrank, Felix Stalder)